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New Jersey Jewish News Montclair-area synagogues seek to reclaim burial practices
Five Montclair-area synagogues have taken the first step toward creating a hevra kadisha, or burial society, in order to reclaim the traditions surrounding death and mourning that have fallen out of practice in recent years among non-Orthodox congregations. Representatives of the congregations met April 2 at Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Montclair, for a forum on death and mourning practices. The event, led by the participating synagogues’ rabbis and attended by about 25 people, included a historical overview of Jewish attitudes toward the afterlife and concurrent sessions on the rituals of death and mourning and discussing death with children. The ultimate goal, said organizers, is to create an area hevra kadisha (literally, sacred fellowship) comprising about 20 volunteers, 10 men and 10 women. The rituals involved, described by Rabbi Elliott Tepperman of Bnai Keshet during the breakout session, include tahara, or a ritual washing of the body, and tahrihim, placing a shroud on the body. In addition to Bnai Keshet, the participating congregations are Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair (Conservative), Congregation Beth Ahm of West Essex in Verona (Conservative), Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield (Reform), and Temple Sholom of West Essex in Cedar Grove (Reform). The synagogues have worked on joint programs in the past, beginning with a community tikun leil Shavuot, or night of Jewish learning, in June 2003. The synagogues’ rabbis said they embraced the project, first suggested by Tepperman about a year ago, for various reasons. For Rabbi E. Noach Shapiro of Shomrei Emunah, it is about reclaiming the mitzvot of cleaning the body and dressing it in a shroud, often carried out for liberal communities by Orthodox Jews. “The notion of having a group of people to whom the deceased is a stranger prepare that deceased for burial completely belies, frankly, some of the deepest core values of community and companionship embedded in our tradition’s approach to death and dying,” he wrote in an e-mail to the community. “Liberal Jewish communities in the U.S. have, by and large, for all sorts of reasons, abdicated this responsibility to each other. [We] would like, together, to change this phenomenon in our community.” Ner Tamid’s Rabbi Steven Kushner had a more personal response, stemming from his mother’s death two years ago. “The local funeral director said to me that he would personally prepare my mother’s body. I had never thought about it. It was extraordinarily touching, when we are most vulnerable, to have this ritual performed by someone not known to her but known to me. It was incredibly meaningful.” The process of establishing the hevra kadisha will also address a gap in Jewish learning, said Rabbi Norman Patz of Temple Sholom. “Across the board, most Jews haven’t got a clue about Jewish beliefs about what happens after we die,” he said in his session on Jewish attitudes toward death. Those attending the April 2 event said they came for personal, professional, and community interests. Naomi Kreutzer, a social worker and member of Bnai Keshet, just started working in a hospice at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. “This is something that’s always been an interest of mine, and at Saint Barnabas we have a Jewish hospice program,” she said. “So I’m here for personal and professional reasons.” The five synagogues are joining a recent trend among non-Orthodox congregations in reclaiming the hevra kadisha. At a conference last year organized by Kavod v’Nichum, a group that promotes traditional Jewish burial practices, 170 people from 25 states and three Canadian provinces took part. Of those, 70 percent were non-Orthodox. In his session on rituals, Tepperman discussed his experience preparing bodies for burial. He described tahara as “a really physical process…done in basic silence….We focus 100 percent on this project.” The act was transformative, he said, sending him into a different sort of state. “The first time I performed tahara, I walked back to my house. My housemates were there studying. I couldn’t be in that place, having just gone through what I did.” Shirley Grill, a Shomrei Emunah congregant who attended the April 2 meeting, is eager to volunteer for the hevra kadisha. “Our obligation is to be there through all life-cycle events, and death is one of them,” she said. “This ritual offers support and comfort, and our obligation is to know it and perform it.” Comment | | |
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